Friday, 28 February 2014

Thursday, 27 February 2014

27.2.14
Christos Dikeakos took this photo, Burnt Single Family House, 2005. The cottage may have been one of the three Watson Street buildings that were set ablaze by "anarchists" the night of September 27th, 2004, according to a Heritage Vancouver Newsletter (Vol.3 No.8). I recall riding my bike towards the rampage after an outing and stopping to watch while drunks hurled debris into the inferno. (Photo: Catriona Jeffries Gallery)

Tuesday, 25 February 2014

25.2.14
Vancouver street photographer Henri Robideau published a book, Flapjacks and Photographs in 1995. Herein we see Bill Gunterman, a mate and mountain goats posing for a strange symmetry in 1905 near Beaton, BC.

Sunday, 23 February 2014

22.2.14
Curt Lang contributed an enormous body of material to the Vancouver Historical Photograph collection at the VPL. The Only Seafood Cafe was a haunt we frequented in the late 1990's. You could get a fine post pint-drinking meal there well past midnight if memory holds.

Monday, 17 February 2014

17.2.14
Proceed in a westerly direction, eventually making your way to 11th Ave off Main. A colour speaking of magenta coats the building where one version of the Glass Slipper was housed in the basement. Claude Ranger was the last musician I watched here. Eventually the Glass Slipper shut down and moved to a house on the former parking lot of the Biltmore Hotel.

That version of the Glass Slipper subsequently burned down. Perhaps a biker gang was involved. The parking lot vanished under condos. Claude Ranger as well. No connection.

Sunday, 16 February 2014

16.2.14
Walk the measure of one block north and turn left. Walk two and one half blocks west along the lane and look for something industrial with corrugation. Take a picture. Packed shed; lead sewage pipe down spout; wood beams and I-beam; vermin entrance.

Saturday, 15 February 2014

15.2.14
This just past scene offers a landscape devoid of joint sovereignty. At the time the Biltmore was a fledgling landmark of sorts. Imagining the menu at McTaco's across the street- circa 1980. (CVA)

Pre-Biltmore we see Begg Motors in addition to Johnny's Cafe on the left sometime in the relative warmth of 1961. (VPL)

Friday, 14 February 2014

14.2.14
The great turnover at 41st and Cambie St. For a view of the construction of the original Oakridge Mall development - embedded within a centenary tribute to the founding of British Columbia - this film gives an impression of land assembly as it was in 1958. (CVA)

Wednesday, 12 February 2014

12.2.14
Ferris Road became 49th after amalgamation and a taste for the rational erased whimsy. This 1907 man sits or crouches in the middle of Main and 49th. Perhaps we are looking south as he looks north, or north as south. The perspective is jarring in its flatness. He just might be sitting with a backdrop draped behind him. (CVA) Walk west to Cambie and turn south. More staging. We too look awry as the city shifts, yawns and groans.

Monday, 10 February 2014

10.2.14
On the path of Still Creek. Day-lighting hasn't made it this far. A camper view however. Dozens of transient tourists are possible on these fringes where industrial parking zones flourish. Seemingly an ancient practice that will persist for time to come, under bridges, aside tracks, in shadowland.

Sunday, 9 February 2014

9.2.14
The grove beyond the side window provides picnic opportunities. China Creek wandered through here. Now the soggy land provides a bucolic separation between Clark Drive and the finest cottage sheen in the city.

Saturday, 8 February 2014

8.2.14
The anniversary of a quixotic hoax. An event within an event and the revitalization of a uniquely neglected public space. An exceptionally difficult beauty marking the memory of Christopher Columbus.

Friday, 7 February 2014

7.2.14
Walk south three blocks and turn left. Continue for another few blocks with focus on the hidden. A fine example of a double-sided cottage at 1159/1163 Kingsway. Tucked between commercial developments it barely avoids detection. Septimus Warburton was the first resident in the right half in 1912. Later in the decade the left side was frequently vacant. Septimus refers to the seventh son.

Thursday, 6 February 2014

6.2.14
We insist that nostalgia is a hazard. Preservation is secondary to the poetics of use-value; meaning is found in spaces where one can live, work and think. Prime examples of insistence are found on busy streets and arteries. A butcher/grocer at 1260 east 12th ave. satisfies all requirements for cottage feel.

Saturday, 1 February 2014

1.2.14If a straight line be bisected and produced to any point ... the figures of the whole produced line, and of the produced part, are together double of the figures of the half line, and of the line made up of the half and produced part. (Notion: Kingsway through Euclid through Oliver Byrne p. 64)

Behind the homes owned at one time by the Pantages of theatre fame we see a double cottage event. One shed-like and suitable for a car, tools, a still.

One house-like and unsuitable for living. No. 336 is the address on the nameless lane/street perpendicular to the part that forms the entrance off East 13th just off Sophia.

They Write to Us of Vancouver

We still haven't been to Canada! ...Perhaps in the not too distant future? My behaviour is no longer just enigmatic, it terrorizes, and I cannot be reproached a single gesture, an illicit word. On the contrary, my conduct is exemplary, completely disorienting...